In another act of gratuitous cruelty, Betsy DeVos insists that undocumented students should get no emergency aid, although Congress did not pass such a restriction.
Politico reports:
DEVOS SEEKS TO ENFORCE RESTRICTIONS ON PANDEMIC RELIEF GRANTS THROUGH REGULATION: The Trump administration will roll out a new regulation this week that restricts which college students may receive emergency grants to cover expenses like food and housing.
— The Education Department says it’s moving to publish, as soon as today, an “interim final rule” that requires colleges to exclude undocumented students and others who don’t qualify for federal student aid from a more than $6 billion emergency cash grant program under the CARES Act, H.R. 748 (116). Such rules typically take effect immediately.
— The new regulation will carry out — now with the force of law — a policy that DeVos first outlined in April. Democrats and college officials have cried foul, arguing that it goes against the intent of the CARES Act, which does not include any explicit restrictions on which students can receive the funding.
— Meanwhile, two states — California and Washington — have brought legal challenges against the guidance. In the face of those lawsuits, the Education Department backed away from the significance of the guidance, promising not to enforce it and downplaying it as “preliminary.”
— It’s not yet clear exactly how DeVos’ new regulation will be worded. But Education Department officials indicated in documents filed with OMB that the administration will move ahead with its contentious position on who can receive relief — limiting funding only to those students who are already eligible for federal financial aid under Title IV of the Higher Education Act.
— Happening today: The expected release of the new regulation this week coincides with a federal judge in San Francisco holding a virtual hearing today on California’s motion for a preliminary injunction blocking DeVos’ guidance. Another judge has set a similar hearing in the Washington state case for Thursday.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Betsy the Beast is hard at work spreading dictatorial-fascism and elitism. This was her goal from the start explaining why she added all those bodyguards back when she was approved by Moscow Mitch’s puppet GOP Senate majority.
Nothing this clueless administration does is shocking any more. DeVos trying to cause the maximum damage to the most vulnerable among us is the perfect example of these tone deaf elitists with faux Christian values. I hope the Bible is right about the camel going through the eye of a needle, Mathew 19:24.
The term “eye of a needle” is used as a metaphor for a very narrow opening. … The New Testament quotes Jesus as saying that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”.
Jewish Talmudic literature uses a similar aphorism about an elephant passing through the eye of a needle as a figure of speech implying that it is unlikely or impossible that a rich man/woman will enter the Kingdom of God. I’ve been told that the only way a rich man would make it through the eye os that needles was if he/she gave up their wealth first.
According to a friend of mine, there is a possible translation of this verse that used “the eye of the needle”. In this case, it might refer to a particular city gate that was so narrow that camels had to be unloaded to pass through. I am not sure how this would change the metaphor, but taken with Jesus’ constant suggestion that we should divest ourselves of material wealth in view of his coming, it might emphasize this.
it does feel as if DeVos’s “christian” values come from some bizzarro opposite world: “and Jesus said, go forth and do maximum damage to the poor…”
Dog-whistle Don and Ditzy DeVoid.
Pampered, entitled racists in a time of nationwide protest against racism. Poster children for what’s wrong with this country.
Clueless DeVille, Cruella’s dumber and more heedlessly and gratuitously cruel younger sister.
And once she’s gone, she will retreat into the bunker of her wealth.
her vast, unearned wealth
Thank you, Eva Moskowitz and all the administrators at Success Academy for your hard work dedicating yourself to making sure Betsy DeVos was confirmed by the Senate as the Secretary of Education.
It is particularly important these days to call out that Eva Moskowitz’ excuses for why she had to suspend so many 5 and 6 year old children in her charter schools that had virtually no white students mirrors the excuses that William Barr, Donald Trump and the right wing “police can do no wrong” defenders of harsh and aggressive police tactics used against communities of color.
“At a recent press conference, Success Academy Charter Schools CEO Eva Moskowitz addressed the issue of student discipline. “It is horrifying,” she told reporters, that critics of her charter schools’ high suspension rates don’t realize “that 5-year-olds do some pretty violent things.” Moskowitz then pivoted to her displeasure with student discipline in New York City public schools, asserting that disorder and disrespect have become rampant.”
(From a Leo Casey contribution to Valerie Strauss’ column in the Washington Post, Oct. 20, 2015)
When Eva Moskowitz says 5 year olds do some pretty violent things, she isn’t talking about white 5 year olds and she got away with it because so many white people who looked the other way as they praised Moskowitz’ “success” and certainly did no question the truly outrageous notion that huge numbers of African american and latino kindergarten students whose parents had ju,sped through hoops to get them into Moskowitz’ cheaters just happened to be violent.
I call out especially Elizabeth Green, at Chalkbeat, who normalized and legitimized Moskowitz claims that so many 5 year olds (who just happened not to be white) acted out violently and didn’t even consider how racist that was. Elizabeth Green reflected the same kind of racist thinking that defended “stop and frisk” and ignored the racism in it because “crime was down”. Green assumed that because students were doing well at Success Academy, that meant that it was because of the harsh discipline meted it to so-called violent kindergarten children instead of her noticing the racism inherent in a charter labeling so many non-white 5 year olds as violent.
The other person who should be called out is Robert Pondiscio, who spent a lot of time writing a book about Success Academy without seeming to ever notice the racism inherent in what he embraced — that the harsh discipline directed toward the non-white students at Success Academy was necessary and never noticed that what he was really implying is that white kindergarten children don’t need it but non-white students at Success Academy do.
All three of them normalized and legitimized the harsh and aggressive treatment that Success Academy directed toward African American kindergarten and first grade students and accepted without question that it was NECESSARY FOR ORDER. If that sounds familiar, it is exactly the underlying belief of those who defend the police actions.
That Valerie Strauss column makes very revealing reading today, where harsh treatment of young children of color is defended by Eva Moskowitz and her white enablers in the same manner as Trump and his cronies defend police.
It always made sense that the Mayor who so loudly defended stop and frisk as absolutely necessary to keep order — Mayor Bloomberg — was also rewarding and enabling the charter school that claimed that treating the youngest children like criminals was necessary to keep order.
Syndicated black conservative columnist, Walter Williams, recently posted an article about the wonders of Success Academy. Of course he simply accepted the Success version of truth without scratching the surface for facts. https://triblive.com/opinion/walter-williams-alternatives-key-to-solving-education-crisis-for-black-students/
Appropriate that Walter Williams works at George Mason University, the university of right wingers.
His reasoning is embarrassingly flawed. “Thirty percent of Brooklyn’s William Floyd elementary school third-graders scored well below proficient in English and language arts, but at Success Academy charter school in the same building, only one did.” (No mention that the charter is notorious for treating their low scoring students in a manner designed to make them leave and the public school takes them in).
The people who oppose charter schools don’t resort to the misleading rhetoric that charter supporters use, but if they did, they would mimic the reasoning of Walter Williams and point out that “18% of Success Academy Kindergarten and first graders at Success Academy Springfield Gardens acted out so violently that the charter had no choice but to suspend all those violent kindergarten students in order to protect the other kindergarten students. But at DOE schools, significantly less than 1% of the very youngest students are given out of school suspensions. So attending a Success Academy school makes a child 36 times more likely to turn into a violent 5 year old who endangers other children than attending a public school.
Just demonstrating how embarrassing the logic of Success Academy defenders really is, but they never get challenged on it. On the other hand, Eva Moskowitz would likely attack me and claim that she isn’t saying that the African American kindergarten children at Success Academy charters with virtually no white students are disproportionately violent, because Moskowitz has certainly implied that those children are just as violent in public schools but the DOE refuses to aggressively punish those kindergarten children in the manner that Eva Moskowitz knows that they deserve.
Moskowitz made it her mission to convince the public that a disproportionately huge number of Kindergarten and first graders DESERVE to be suspended very frequently for their violent actions. She has claimed that over and over again, without anyone in the white media questioning it since the young students Eva Moskowitz is suspending are disproportionately African American and Latinx.
Defenders of Success believe all the reported hype without examining what is really going on.
Defenders of Success Academy have (intentionally) ignored how little difference there is between “police need to act aggressively in certain communities to stop crime” and “Kindergarten and first grade teachers need to act aggressively in certain Success Academy elementary schools to prevent violent actions by students.”
In both cases, the communities and charters where supposedly that kind of aggressive policing or discipline is “necessary” are primarily African American and Latinx.
Would the advocates of such aggressive policing and aggressive disciplining of kindergarten children get away with their justification (“it is necessary to keep order”) if what they were advocating was directed to mostly white communities and schools? I doubt it.
How large a research staff do you have!
Nan,
If your question was addressed to me, I have no research staff. I post what interests me.
How many hours must be in your day! Remarkable. Thanks.
At first I thought you wrote, ‘grotesque cruelty’ but it’s actually “gratuitous cruelty’.
She is gross. And, all the wealth in the world cannot wash away the stench of the foul deeds of DeVos and her warped, highly dangerous patron. It clings to them like a second skin because it is who they are.
Well, I’m going to go dive into a neighbor’s clear, mountain lake and swim deep underwater. Even reading about DeVos makes me feel dirty.
Summer is here. Let’s hope it brings real change!
John: I visited upstate New York a couple of summers. Beautiful, clear water. One Pennsylvania pond we got on in a canoe was full of salamanders. You live in a paradise of nature.
OK. You got me off the subject.
I hope these legal challenges work, or at the very least impose a long delay on DeVos’ ability to add this to her list of “I love Trump and am a loyal servant to HIM” policies.
How can someone be so unfailingly unfathomably un-American.
Any lawyers in the room?
Isn’t this in violation of Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe?
Plyler v. Doe is a U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court struck down a Texas statute that denied funding to local school districts for the education of children who were not “legally admitted” into the United States, and which authorized local school districts to deny enrollment to such children.
Is this a ploy to test that case and get the Supreme Court to reverse its course – which would be a deadly precedent.